Top 10 Skills in Business Writing for the Modern Workplace – Australia

Posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2018 at 10:30 am.

Bad writing is actually damaging. According to the Harvard Business Review, bad writing can destroy a company’s productivity.[i] In a survey of 547 businesspeople, 81% of them said that poorly written material wastes a lot of their time” and “what they read is frequently ineffective because it’s too long, poorly organized, unclear, filled with jargon, and imprecise.”[i]

Moreover, writing is trickier than ever with the Internet and smartphones making our attention spans short. Sam Leith, author of Write to the Point: How to Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page says, “You are not aiming to win an academic argument (with your writing), but to get your audience on side.”[ii] To gain mastery of good business writing, here are the top 10 skills to adopt: